The Paranoid Interface

This paper explores the rise of paranoid perception. It reasons that in recent years, a distinctly paranoid and conspiratorial understanding of reality has emerged in mainstream society, one that brings opportunities and implications for mixed, alternate and augmented reality experiences, particularly in the realm of games. In discussing paranoia, this paper does not denote clinical paranoia, but rather the widely observed cultural tendency towards conspiracy thinking that has influenced mainstream understandings of reality, and in turn, represents opportunities for hybrid reality experiences. This paper does not aim to explain the reasons behind the presence of paranoid perception or to assess its validity or truth-value, but instead aims to recognise the pervasiveness of the phenomenon and to explore how it is being applied in hybrid reality games.